05 August 2007

Activism

It's hard to gauge the extent of anger among freedom l0ving Americans over the passage, in both the House and Senate, of bills amending FISA that expand the ability of Our government to perform surveillance on U.S. citizens without obtaining a warrant. One can observe the usual gnashing of teeth, name-calling, and other expressions of disgust on all the usual anti-authoritarian blog sites. Makes me wonder if I'm seeing a pattern here:

We get the bad news.
We wail and clench our fists.
We write brilliant exposes and prescriptions.

And then we settle back down to wait for the next offense by the Bush White House (backed up by a statist/corporatist-stacked Judiciary) and our feckless Congress.

Now, this patter-n of ours is not necessarily as useless as it may appear, and we can look upon this behavior with affection and hope. If each episode raises the temperature of the burn, eventually a critical mass of energy will combust, possibly resulting in - oh, I don't know - action, maybe?

What we are witnessing then, is the continuing gestation of We the People's organic and intrinsic resistance to the gradual imposition of State oppression.

1 comment:

Karen M said...

Hey, Gordon...

In reply to your response (to ondelette's reply to mine) at GG's blog, I'd like to suggest that we do something organized like come up with a "voters' platform."

You could start a new post for it, allowing people to comment, and then update the post with the comments as needed. [You can also keep moving the post up to the top of the page.]

In the past, the "party" would always come up with the "platform." However, things have already changed by a few degrees, and there is more back-and-forth between candidates (Democrats anyway) and voters. Why not in this, too?

Also, I don't think it should be a few people deciding on the planks, but maybe when it's time to synthesize the text. Otherwise, the more the merrier.

Instead, brainstorm first-- online, perhaps with a list of suggestions, but also asking for free-text suggestions, just to indicate any interest in a topic/issue. Once there is a critical mass, have someone or ones refine the list, and then invite people to vote on them in some way, either individually on some kind of scale, or else by prioritizing them. (I would prefer the former over the latter.)

That's where it gets more complicated. Do you try to limit people to one response, etc., and how do you do that.

But, maybe by then, some other group who knows how to administer such surveys would step into help.

What do you think?

[Tops on my list is restoring the Constitution.]